Patricia looks on during the first half of a New England Patriots game against the New York Jets at Gillette Stadium on December 31, 2017, in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Patricia was named head coach of the Detroit Lions on February 5, 2018.

Jim Rogash/Getty

Twenty-two years ago, a young woman went to police to allege that Matt Patricia—now the head coach of the Detroit Lions—and his college teammate and fraternity brother Greg Dietrich entered her South Padre Island hotel room while she was sleeping and took turns sexually assaulting her. The charges were filed in Cameron County quickly after, in March 1996, during the rowdy spring break period that SPI locals call “Texas Week,” and dropped that August, after, according to the prosecutor, the woman in question said that she didn’t want to face the stress of a trial.

But Patricia, who was hired by the Lions in February after a run as the defensive coordinator for the New England Patriots, is once again facing questions about the allegation after a story in the Detroit News revisited the charges. Patricia’s response has been bold: holding a press conference, declaring himself the victim of false allegations, and asking the world to sympathize with him for having to live with these charges. It’s an approach that makes a certain degree of sense for a case in which the accuser hasn’t come forward in decades—but it’s also one that asks the public to view these allegations strictly through the lens of the accused, when the national conversation around sexual assault has evolved.

During the press conference at the Lions’ facility, Patricia took questions about the allegations, which were made against him when he was 21. He repeated multiple times that he was falsely accused. He explained that, after his arrest, what followed was “something that was very traumatic to me” and said, “I lived with the mental torture of a situation where facts can be completely ignored or misrepresented with disregard to the consequence and pain that it would create for another person.” He blamed the Detroit News for reporting on its discovery of the allegations, claiming that it was done “for the sole purpose of hurting my family, my friends, and this organization.” When asked by reporters at the press conference what happened, Patricia insisted, “What’s important here [about] what happened 22 years ago is what didn’t happen. . . . I was innocent then, I am innocent now. I was falsely accused of something I did not do.” When asked why the grand jury returned an indictment, he said that he “went through the process, and the case was dismissed.” When asked if he ever entered the woman’s hotel room, he declined to go into specifics, instead simply stating, “Again, I did nothing wrong, and that’s all I’m going to say on that matter.”

His lawyer has been even more vocal in describing the charges as false. When asked by the Detroit News if Patricia had an alibi, attorney Jeff Wilson told the paper that “his alibi is this was a false accusation” and described the report that led to Patricia’s arrest and indictment as “a fabrication.” He said the victim “recanted the sexual assault allegations multiple times” and insinuated that the woman who went to the police may have done so for an unspecified personal reason. “I don’t know what type of problems the girl was having,” Wilson said, while Dietrich’s lawyer, John Tasolides, said, “The people who make immediate outcries are false accusers many times.” (This is a new spin on the usual victim-shaming argument of “If she was really raped, why did it take her so long to go to the police?”)

Patricia doesn’t have to provide an explanation of exactly what happened that night, since the charges were dismissed. But his response to the Detroit News story is unusual because the situation itself is rare: Patricia faced a serious allegation, substantiated by a grand jury indictment—but he doesn’t face an accuser. Patricia’s lawyer described the situation as “he said, she said,” but in 2018 it’s only “he said.”

The woman who made the allegation, according to the Detroit News, declined to comment to the paper. (Reporter Robert Snell, who broke the story, told Texas Monthly that he discovered the allegation while doing a routine public records search, rather than receiving a tip from a source.) Back in 1996, after the night in question, the woman brought the case to police. According to the Detroit News, she discussed what happened with a detective, an officer, a doctor, a nurse, and at least one friend. But she declined to testify, and the charges were dismissed. The handwritten notes from the assistant district attorney in the case’s dismissal read, “Victim is unable to testify and can not give a date certain when she will be available. Victim does not feel she can face the pressures or stress of a trial. Victim may request that the case be refiled at a later date.”

Since the victim hasn’t spoken about the incident and has had her name redacted from the indictment, the only perspectives available are that of Patricia and his lawyer. Even with the opportunity to offer an unchallenged counter-narrative, however, they’ve declined to comment beyond attacking the credibility and integrity of the woman who went to the police over two decades ago.

Only 37 percent of sexual assaults are reported to police in the first place, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. On South Padre Island—which has averaged between ten and twenty sexual assault cases a year between 2010 and 2016, the only years that data is available from the Texas Department of Public Safety—it’s likely that there are dozens of sexual assaults that are never investigated. The #MeToo movement has helped erase some of the stigma associated with coming forward as a sexual assault survivor over the past several months, but in 1996 the culture worked very differently. And while it’s similarly possible that Patricia was indeed the victim of a false report, the odds of that are even lower. Studies of false reports have found that such cases happen just 2.9 to 7.1 percent of the time.

When asked about the accusation now, Patricia could have simply said that the matter was behind him and emphasized that he had been cleared through the legal process. But that’s not what he’s doing. Patricia doesn’t just want us to believe that the matter is settled and in the past—he wants us to actively identify him as the person who suffered a trauma 22 years ago. By insisting that he was the victim in all of this and that his accuser was lying, there’s a fresh allegation being made that deserves scrutiny: an allegation coming from Patricia, directed at a woman whose name we don’t know.

Never Miss a Story

Sign up for Texas Monthly's State of Texas newsletter to get stories like this delivered to your inbox daily.

Enter your email address

I agree to the terms and conditions.

The State of Texas(Daily)A daily digest of Texas news, plus the latest from Texas Monthly

This Week in Texas(Weekly)The best stories from Texas Monthly

Editor’s Desk(Monthly)A message from the editors at Texas Monthly

If you fill out the first name, last name, or agree to terms fields, you will NOT be added to the newsletter list. Leave them blank to get signed up.

Comments

He didn’t mishandle it. The charge was dismissed. There aren’t two sides- the case was already resolved, in his favor.

Just like there aren’t two sides to the Yale nap arrest case, there aren’t two sides to this.

Chuck Heston

Stupid article. To insinuate that there was possibly any merit to the false claim against Patricia is ridiculous. Is the Texas Monthly tabloid journalism? There is only one reason why the accuser is not coming fourth now, because she lied!!!

Debbie Farmer

You obviously didn’t read the article very carefully. The reason ” the accuser is not coming fourth (sic) now” is because she isn’t making any accusations now. She’s not part of this conversation, which, I suppose, is the “reason why” you & Patricia think it’s safe to vilify her. How extremely brave & judgemental.

Casey Rybach

Consider the possibility that what Patricia is saying is the truth. If someone falsely accused you of sexual assault. I would imagine you too would “vilify” them by saying those accusations are false.

Chuck Heston

I read it. And I suspect the reasons she did not want to go through with the trial AND why she is not coming forward now was that the accusation WAS FALSE and she didn’t want to get in trouble.

Patrick from Yorkville

We will never know. What we know is that someone once accused this guy of a very bad act, and that the authorities took it very seriously, but that the accuser decided not to go through with testifying – because at age 22 she couldn’t afford to fly back to South TX to testify, or because of the pain and trauma of re-living the event, or because she didn’t want to face cross-examination, which she didn’t have to do when she gave testimony for the indictment. We know what a representative of the authorities wrote at the time. And we know that the accusation was handled by the system – it went through the process – and resulted in a DISMISSAL. And that should be enough. We have a system and we have a presumption of innocence – especially AFTER the system has run its course and the result was a dismissal. Not a hung jury, not a plea to a lesser charge, but a dismissal.

That is why in most states, employers are not even allowed to ask about arrests that did not lead to convictions.

Try to imagine a situation in which Patricia had coached the Lions to 9-7 last year and was being replaced by Jim Caldwell, and someone wrote a story about the 22 year old DISMISSAL. That would never happen – or if it did, it would be the writer of the article that would be pilloried, and a new phrase “coaching while Black” would become popular.

There is no argument that “this should be looked at seriously, again, in light of the MeToo climate.”

It WAS looked at seriously, and it went through the process, and the accused maintains and maintained his innocence, and the process resulted in a DISMISSAL because the accuser, for whatever reason, wouldn’t show up to court. MeToo is about conduct that occurred when nothing could be done about it, or accusations that were not believed, not taken seriously, or swept under the rug. In this case, the accusation was taken as seriously as possible – and the case STILL ended up in a DISMISSAL.

The comments about “well I’ve managed to never been arrested” are stupid. Good for you. Nobody controls what other people say about them. If someone alleges that you did something that constitutes a crime, and all the police have to go on is that allegation, then you are going to be arrested. If that ends up going nowhere, then it should not follow you around, because you did not create it.

Joe McCabe

Nice article. Only true facts are that he was arrested, indicted and case was dismissed. Guy got lucky. They had evidence

Patrick from Yorkville

They should have gone to trial then. Can’t have it both ways. Can’t drop the charges and then claim that “we had evidence.” It’s like walking away from a fight and claiming that you could have beaten the other guy. Well you didn’t. So it’s over.

We have a presumption of innocence even BEFORE a case reaches its conclusion.

And this case DID reach a conclusion – which was a DISMISSAL.

That this is news is just wrong.

Indictment just means that the government outlined a prima facie case. The defense doesn’t get to cross-exam, question or even bring its own evidence, or make an argument. The government doesn’t have to bring an indictment. I don’t know why it did in a he-said-she-said case – – it ties the government to the details she gives in the indictment process. The only strategic logic behind an indictment is that they wanted to pressure the defendants to take a lesser charge – which neither of them did, which is pretty telling.

Bottom line, the fact that one of them is now a public figure should not make DISMISSED charges relevant. That disqualifies or could disqualify anyone who has ever had anything said about them from rising beyond a certain level in society.

I was accused of something once – something I didn’t in any way, shape or form do. I informed my ex-wife that I was moving in with my GF, whose family knew my family from a generation back, and whom I’d known before, and because she assumed that I’d “known” her before, she went bat-guano. My employer sent my insurance forms to my ex-wife’s address and she called me and told me to pick them up – I came by and I was reading the forms and then she got a call and tried to grab the forms from my hands. I didn’t initially let go – then she hung up on the person who had called her, and called the cops, and claimed that I had dragged her across the room. I was standing there reading my mail that, as she had informed me, had come to the house mistakenly, and that she had told me to come and pick up. Didn’t matter – because she made the claim, I was arrested – that is the procedure and the cops had zero choice.

This charge too was dismissed – months later, because that’s how long it takes for the judicial process, because it’s that easy to get someone arrested, so they end up with dozens of cases most of which end up getting dismissed, against people who never did anything to anyone. The sheer logistical impact of holding that against people in a hiring process would reduce the workforce by like 20% – – on top of the impact of making anyone who was convicted of a victim-less crime, like pot possession, ineligible for a good job.

I have been on both sides of the bar in matters of prosecution, and I think that people watch too much TV. The cops arrest lots of people. Sometimes based on a false accusation, and sometimes based on a person’s being in the wrong place at the wrong time – – e.g., trying to walk to the corner grocery store when a race riot or other protest breaks out, and getting rounded up with everyone else. And sometimes they get the right guy. But the cops and prosecutors are not out there letting people go, giving out deals left and right. Yes, they give out deals to small-time drug sellers for info on a major dealer – which is not relevant here. Yes, if a guy is in for 4 things and the government has 100% proof on one of them, and there’s a meaningful penalty for it, the prosecution might dismiss the three to allow a plea on the one and avoid the cost and time of going to trial – because the result is the same for the prosecution and the cops, and the victims.

But they don’t, and can’t, just let someone walk for its own sake. Even if that had happened NOW, the cops and the prosecutors don’t do that for head coaches just because they are famous – – and in 1996 Matt Patricia was not a head coach. He was just some fat senior from a second tier engineering college that most people can’t pronounce. And they clearly didn’t let him off the hook – they went full tilt on him, even getting an indictment, and he AND the teammate, who had his OWN counsel, BOTH stuck to their claims of innocence, BOTH refused to plea out, and the cases against BOTH were dismissed.

It’s been through the system – two decades ago – with the result being that it never even went to trial. That’s it. Done. Over. Not news, not a story.

Dismissed means dismissed, that’s what our Founding Fathers intended, it’s what most states require in terms of employment screening, and that’s for some very good reasons.

Patrick from Yorkville

“They had evidence?” Obviously they did not feel that there was enough evidence to go to trial – which they obviously wanted to do since they got an indictment.

We have a process. The process was followed. It resulted in a DISMISSAL. Not “not guilty,” not a hung jury – a DISMISSAL. The prosecution had their chance, the accuser had her chance.

An indictment does not involve the defense at all. The prosecution lays out its side of the story – which in this case is he-said-she-said. The accuser obviously felt that she could testify to the grand jury. But there is no cross-examination with a grand jury. So all you have to do is keep your own story straight, tell it once, and you get an indictment. That proves nothing. That’s why they say that a prosecutor “could indict a ham sandwich.” It’s not much more than the charge itself.

And that is why we have the rest of the process, which resulted in a DISMISSAL.

This should not be news. And it should not be part of an employment investigation. Under most states’ laws, it is not allowed to be part of an employment investigation – because if everyone who has ever been charged but not convicted of something were ineligible for work, workforce participation would decline by about 20%.

Casey Rybach

Guilty until proven innocent. This entire article is premised on the allegations being true without a shred of consideration that they are, as Patricia is alleging, false. Why do we assume that Patricia’s allegations are a lie and the accuser’s allegations are true? If the DA had evidence they could have moved forward with the prosecution without the accusers participation — they didn’t, and so, they didn’t. Indicted sounds guilty but as New York Judge Sol Wachtler put it, “If a district attorney wanted, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.”

Get the Magazine

We report on vital issues from politics to education, as well as being the indispensable authority on the Texas scene, covering everything from music to cultural events with insightful recommendations.